Media Literacy

How the Media Uses Language to Manipulate You

I grew up in a town where English was a subject that was looked down on. How could you possibly need to study English any more when you already know how to read and write? What’s the point in studying plays and poetry and language acquisition? The point is because the more you know about language, the more immune you become to its effects.

Language is an incredible tool and like any great power, can be used for good and evil. What’s important is how you use it. How you say something is often more important than what you actually mean.

The media uses language to manipulate us in ways we don’t always notice. Small changes in wording can make a huge difference to how someone perceives an article and whom it will reach. Imagery can also create a greater picture in our heads, allowing us to relate to the article more.

It is, more often than not, the language that is the equivalent of what tabloids do to scaremonger and sensationalise. It’s what parents do to small children to get them to stay in bed: ‘Don’t get out of bed, or the boogey man will get you!’

Any good journalist should write or report in such a way to show impartiality, objectiveness. However, most journalists and news outlets don’t do this. They all have their opinions, and it’s those opinions that sell papers. You have your ‘Everyone is out to get us!’ papers like the Daily Mail, your left-wing papers like The Guardian and right-wing papers like The Times. They all have their target audiences and they appeal to them using the appropriate language. Take these headlines, about a statement a French politician made about foreigners entering the UK:

The Guardian: Migrants ‘willing to die’ to reach UK
Daily Mail: Immigrants ‘ready to die’ to get to Britain because of the ‘huge amount’ handed out in benefits, says the Mayor of Calais

The Guardian focuses on the facts. The Guardian looks at the extremes people are willing to go to in order to survive. It appeals to our humanity.

The Daily Mail, on the other hand, focuses on something that will get its readers to click on the article: the abuse of benefits by those that aren’t born in the UK. The Guardian also refers to them as ‘migrants’ as opposed to ‘immigrants’. A two letter difference that doesn’t have a huge difference in its actual meaning:

See? Not a huge difference. Until you look into the way that each word is used. ‘Immigrants’ have a hugely negative connotation and have for a long time. UKIP are using them to their advantage and scaremongering citizens against people moving to live in the UK. Using the word ‘immigrant’ and the quote about the ‘huge amount’ of benefits that the UK apparently hands out immediately provokes a negative reaction. It gets the UKIP fans waving their British flag in the name of ‘patriotism’ and demanding to know why we’re so welcoming to these subhumans taking away from the UK’s benefits system.

‘Migrants’ meanwhile, is a more impartial word with less negative connotations, and that specifically mentions finding work in its definition.

The phrase ‘handed out’ from the Daily Mail headline also makes the process seem easy, like we’re willing to give just anyone some benefits so long as they’re on our soil. This is a more colloquial way of saying ‘given’.

So, next time you watch a news report or read an article in the newspaper make sure to pay attention to the language they use in their reporting. Even if it doesn’t seem important and even if you believe you can’t be influenced by it, trust me: you can! Language matters!

Take the following clip from Russell Howard’s Good News. It shows the difference between Ebola coverage in the US and the UK.